Maxx Sizeler

Maxx Sizeler (he/him), born and based in New Orleans, is a visual artist of many media and fine woodworker. Maxx received a MFA from The University of New Orleans, a BFA from Parsons School of Design New York, and attended Parsons at the American College in Paris. Maxx’s work reflects his interest in a wide variety of subjects, social issues, and mediums – exploring projects both personal and societal – living as trans between the gender binaries, mass-shootings, illuvial clay/costal erosion, and how Katrina changed New Orleans. Both craft and conception are important to Maxx. His wood working skills are reflected throughout his art practice, from 2D to 3D work, to functional work.

Artist’s Statement

Newcomb Museum invited Maxx to make a piece for Unthinkable Imagination: A Creative Response to the JuvenileJustice Crisis. Maxx was paired with a 12 year old girl who’s mother had previously been incarcerated. Maxx built a sculptural mirror frame inspired by the child’s words about her mother, carving them into the top of the piece. Conceptually, it is about the mother and child relationship. The center is a horizontal mirror, on two overlapping circles of mahogany. Two viewers, side by side, can simultaneously see their own reflections. Placed at the center bottom of the mirror are two embracing hands of a mother and child carved from cherry. The piece is divided into halves, the “child side” and the “mother side”. The “mother side” is a larger circular shape with flower petals of wise old-growth cypress. The “child side” is a smaller circular shape with petals of young new-growth cypress. The circle shapes are made of African mahogany and the top banner, with the child’s words, is of old-growth cypress. The pink and purple mirror frame banding is of sapele and purple heart.

Maxx’s installation, Head Start (1949-2018 Mass-Shooting Project), was created over the course of three years. It sets the scene of a child’s bedroom filled with gun-shaped hug pillows made from recycled children’s bedding materials. The fabrics are brightly colored with patterns similar to what we ourselves may have had. Each pillow represents a different mass-shooting with a tag on each noting the location, year the shooting happened, the guns used, and number of people who lost their lives. The bedroom, in its sweet colors, is creepy and cemetery-like. The furniture is painted a flat dead light blue, headstone-like; The pillows strewn about the furniture are body-like and the bed is like a cold autopsy table. The mobile dangles implements of violence over the dreaming child who studies bomb making for fun. The bedroom is rendered in sweet child patterns and baby colors. The hand-drawn coloring book provides the information about 17 mass shootings.

The Installation entitled, Sliver By The River (75 feet down), illuvial project: illuvial deposits are the foundation of existence in Southern Louisiana. Much of this fertile land, which gives us so much, is and has been polluted and destroyed by levies on the river, logging of cypress forests, extraction and refining of oil, dredging of canals, and chemical plants. The result is climate change and erosion that is displacing people. This work is constructed from illuvial clay borings collected from a site in New Orleans. The borings document ground content from surface to one hundred feet below. The clay is distinctly different at depth levels, reflecting the slow building of the landscape by the over-flowing Mississippi for thousands of years. Some of the borings have been preserved and some were rehydrated so they could be constructed into ashtrays. Both are fired in a method which gives them the quality of artifacts. The work includes a shovel carved from native Louisiana old growth cypress with a handle of American cedar drift-wood pulled from the river. Both cypress and cedar are types of wood valued for their water and rot resistance qualities. The cypress is an artifact of a landscape that no longer exists; and the clay is a reminder of continual land loss.

Maxx’s wooden tool sculptures are part of a continuing exploration into the idea of the gender hybrid. As a gender variant person Maxx’s gender is outside the traditional boy/girl binary of gender. The sculptures are hybrid tools. The viewer or user has to invent a new use or way of using or seeing the hybrids.

The installation entitled, Picking Up The Pieces, a history project constructed after Hurricane Katrina, documents the significant loss of architecture in New Orleans, the loses of residents’ lives, and the city’s future history. The project also focuses on the hidden history that was uncovered by the floodwaters and demolition. The project includes archeological-like boxes, written pieces by visitors, a time capes, a video of broken water mains, demolition lists, and installation pieces. This project is all digitally archived at the Historic New Orleans Collection.